Wild Thing Redux

Last Friday, I had the very great pleasure of standing next to my art quilt, Wild Thing - 1968, with Sandi Stromberg, my literary collaborator, and beaming with pride in our accomplishments. Today I am beaming with the pleasure of sharing Sandi’s marvelous poetic paean to that wild and unexpected year. Let’s turn this week’s blog spotlight on Sandi. Those of you who were there for 1968, get ready for a rollercoaster ride through the past. Those of you too young to have experienced it, read and be awed by what us Boomers—I mean Wild Things— lived through. Maybe you’ll understand us better.

 

Wild Things in a Mythic Time

Eighteen and twenty-one in 1968, we break through

Midwestern tame into the Age of Aquarius.

It’s the Year of the Earth Monkey. The annus mirabilis,

says Time. A miracle year that turns the world upside

down. We become flower children and free love is free,

or so we think. We roll with the Beatles’ I want

 

to hold your hand, rock with the Rolling Stones’

Satisfaction. We sing out “Wild Thing, I think

I love you.” And Born to Be Wild gets our motors

 

running on the dance floor: the monkey, the pony,

the mashed potato. We let down our hair, straighten

it with lemonade cans, wear platform shoes

 

and bell bottoms, ditch garter belts and shaving legs.

Television alternates between outrageous and

wholesome. Laugh-In paints Goldie Hawn’s body

 

gold and lets Tiny Tim tiptoe through the tulips.

We begin to say, “You bet your sweet bippy”, call

positive things “rad,” downturns “bummers.”

 

Family Affair, Andy Griffith, and Beverly Hillbillies

stage the American Dream, happiness despite

hardship if a family pulls together. Off screen

 

recklessness and change rules. Jimi Hendrix,

Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison push the edges of life,

sing like there’s no tomorrow, until there isn’t.

 

Lava lamps drip dim light in shadowy rooms.

Blacklight posters rage with neon colors and psychedelic

landscapes. We fall under the heavy-metal spell of

 

Black Sabbath. Its dark, foreboding beat. Tolling bells

and thunderstorms, body bags arriving nightly

from Vietnam. As innocence dies, we burn bras

 

and draft cards. Some join SDS, the Weathermen.

Head shops peddle bongs, pipes, and rolling papers.

Puff the Magic Dragon hints at weed’s promise.

 

Assassinations shock: Martin Luther King, Jr.

and Robert Kennedy. Washington, D.C.

set on fire. Revolution in Chicago at the Democratic

 

Convention. Marvin Gaye is crowned prince

of Motown. Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding,

and a whole choir bolt out of Detroit to claim

 

venues in a wider world. We protest oppression

demanding “Power to the People,” wear peace signs

on T-shirts, wage fights for the new Civil Rights.

 

Pants join women’s wardrobes. Four-letter words,

their vocabulary. Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique

births NOW, the National Organization for Women

 

with its Bill of Rights. WEAL demands action for equity.

WLM demands liberation. They call 1968 “a year

off the rails, mythic.” They call it “a perverse

 

genius of a year.” We call it a revolution against

the establishment. A push for equality for women

and blacks, in music, at drinking fountains, on the roads,

 

in shops and schools and cinemas and voting booths.

We aren’t sure what they look like,

but we long for intangibles like hope, peace, love—

 

a girl putting a daisy

in the muzzle of a gun.

           —Sandi Stromberg 

 Sandi vividly captured the pivotal year 1968 in all its complexities. Her words pair beautifully with my visual expression of the energy and anticipation engendered by events back then. If I may say so myself, we had a true collaboration that yielded something spectacular. Thank you, Sandi, for partnering with me!

What year was mythic for you? We’d love to hear about it.

Ciao